Quotes

I dunno, when I started writing really I was like, filling out applications and stuff real early. Last name first, first name last, sexÖ occasionally, stuff like that. Then I was writing letters, filling out forms, writing on bathroom walls...

What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.

Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.† The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms; the great devotions; and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings -- words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

I consider terror the finest emotion, so I will try to terrify the reader. If I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify; and if I find that I cannot horrify, Iíll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.

While it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

No one put a gun to your head and ordered you to become a writer. One writes out of his own choice and must be prepared to take the rough spots along the road with a certain equanimity, though allowed some grinding of the teeth.

The characters can own villas and yachts, and armies can be deployed at no cost. A novelist is limited only by his or her imagination. Writing a novel is a heady experience, for a novelist creates worlds and plays God.

Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately-many people will help you unintentionally.